September 03, 2012
from MessageToEagle Website

Spanish version

 

Are we just a computer simulation?

Who or what is the creator?

More and more scientists are now seriously considering the possibility that we might live in a matrix, and they say that evidence could be all around us.

Rich Terrell, from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology has helped,

• design missions to Mars

• discovered four new moons around Saturn, Neptune and Uranus

• taken pictures of the distant solar system

Terrell has his opinion about our creator who most refer to as God.

"One has to think what are the requirements for God?

• God is an inter-dimensional being connected with everything in the Universe

• a creator that is responsible for the Universe

• in some way can change the laws of physics, if he wanted to

I think those are good requirements for what God ought to be," Terrell says.

This is the same as programmers creating simulations, Terrell explains.

Rich Terrell goes through his argument using Moore's Law and the Turing Test...

Terrell wondered,

how much computing power would a simulation of the Earth require...?

Humans are doubling the computing power every 13 months and Terrell says that computers already match the human brain in computational speed.

Right now (2012) our fastest computers on the planer are capable of one million billion operations per second Terrell says.

At this rate, in 10 years, Terrell believes computers will be able to create a "photo real simulation of all that we see around us" - the Earth.

But,

can a computer populate such a simulation with thinking beings, artificially intelligent simulated beings, like humans?

Terrell thinks so and that humans are on the verge of creating worlds inside computers populated by sentient beings.

Terrell says he has found evidence that God is a programmer in nature.

"Look at the way the Universe behaves, it's quantized, it's made of pixels.

Space is quantitized, matter is quantitized, energy is quantitized, everything is made of individual pixels.

Which means the Universe has a finite number of components. Which means a finite number of states. Which means it's computer.

That infers the Universe could be created by lines of code in a computer," Terrell says.

Is there evidence of computer processing of our "objective reality"...?
 

The idea that we might live in a computer simulation

has been suggested by a number of scientists.
 

One clue is an experiment in the physics laboratory at the California Institute of Technology.

A 1928 experiment (the Thomson experiment plus the Davisson-Germer experiment) provide evidence.

Using an electron beam transmitted through a piece of graphite with a screen behind is set up.

 

The background screen records how the electrons ricochet off the graphite.

 

At this subatomic level, the pattern is not random, as might be expected, but is a diffraction pattern.

Terrell notes,

"The experiment shows something really rather extraordinary, that matter, even though it behaves when you are looking at it, measuring it, as individual particles, when you are not looking at it, matter is diffuse.

 

It spreads out, it doesn't have a finite form in the Universe."

When observed they are "dots", when we look away, they lose their physical form.

Is this behavior of matter similar, or parallel, to the behavior in a simulation?

Terrell says this is the case!

As in a simulation,

"The Universe gives you what you are looking at when you look at it."

Further,

"When you are not looking at it, it's not necessarily there".

This results in a Universe that is pixelated and only assumes definite form when observed. This is how computer simulations operate.

Terrell's idea is not really new and he is not the only scientist who has suggested we might be living in a computer simulation.

In his science paper "The Simulation Argument" Professor Nick Bostrom of Oxford University, suggested it is likely we are already in a simulation being run by a "post human" civilization in our own future.

We discussed Bostrom's ideas in 'Do We Live in a Computer Simulation Created by an Advanced Alien Civilization?'

Research conducted by other scientists such as for example David Bohm, Karl Pribram and Alain Aspect suggest,

'Our Universe is a Gigantic and Wonderfully Detailed Holographic Illusion'...

The idea that our creator is a computer programmer is controversial and can even be offending to religious people, but Terrell has his own views on religion, spirituality and science.

"Our world bears all the hallmarks of one that is simulated.

Who would be more likely to simulate humans than humans from the future, our descendants?

They would be god-like beings able to create their own universes."

Terrell actually finds spirituality in this scenario.

"I take great solace in this.

 

It shows that along the line we have evolved from nothing into self-awareness and that self-awareness has reached the stage now where our future selves have become gods.

To me that's a very, very spiritual thing and that's where my spirituality comes from in seeing things like that.

 

To me, that's a religion..."